Paul J Broadbent

St Paul: 40 Reflections for 40 Days in Lent Paul J Broadbent

Lent is a season where we are encouraged to reset, reflect and start afresh. If, like me, you search, you hope but seem to get no blinding moments of revelation or realisation then I would invite you to try and take a passage (a page) each day during the course of Lent (or really whenever), to reflect, make a note and then maybe see whether anything, any word or passage has touched you, moved you. My reflections are just that, drawn from life, love, family and prison chaplaincy experience. Yours maybe completely different and that is fine. All that I do know is that this passage above, some degree of honest reflection and acceptance, was at least instrumental in promptiing a serial drug trafficker, just before his release, to offer to write a letter a letter of apology to a secondary school teacher whom he had seriously assaulted some ten years previously. The assault had led to immediate expulsion, and in turn then to a life of involvement in drugs. A well-received letter of remorse, a renewal of mind, a chef trainee post, changed him. Passages from St Paul gave hope to many of the lives I was lucky to meet in Prison Chaplaincy. This Lent, reset, reflect and hopefully St Paul's letters may help you.